4 MORPHOLOGY. 



to the group tribal rank in contradistinction to the other groups 

 constituting the Order Ooniferae as circumscribed by them.* But the 

 fruit of the Taxads which has usually a succulent covering enclosing 

 a single seed, and which greatly resembles a drupe, e.g., a cherry or 

 damson,t is very different from the ligneous scales and numerous 

 seeds that make up the fruit of the true Coniferre.J This structural 

 difference, together with other characters that will be noted in the 

 sequel, separate the Taxads from the true Conifers in a manner more 

 marked than is usually indicated by tribal characters, and therefore a 

 higher place in the series of groupings forming the systematic arrange- 

 ment of the Vegetable Kingdom seems to be a more natural one for 

 them. This view of their systematic place was taken by Dr. Lindley 

 very many years ago, and is adopted by Dr. Maxwell Masters in his 

 recently published notes on the Genera of Taxacere and ConifeneJ 

 The Taxacere are thence here recognised as a Natural Order distinct 

 from, but closely associated with the Conifene. The two Orders thus 

 associated are of the highest importance to Man in many respects : 

 they supply a larger amount of the most valuable timber for con- 

 structive purposes than is at present obtained from any other Natural 

 Order ; their resinous products are important articles of commerce that 

 are largely used in many of the arts ; in no other family of trees and 

 shrubs are found so many subjects suitable for the decoration of the 

 garden, park and landscape, or more valuable for forestry and other 

 purposes in rural economy ; and there is no existing race of plants, 

 that can awaken a deeper interest in their relation to the distant 

 Past than Taxads and Conifers, vestiges of whose ancestry can be 

 traced through a long series of geological ages till the primeval forms 

 become as mere shadows that finally vanish in the unfathomable 

 antiquity of palaeozoic aeons. 



MORPHOLOGY. 



THE SEEDLING PLANT. 



THE seedling is the development of the embryo or rudimentary plant 

 enclosed in the resting seed. The embryo of Taxads and Conifers, like 

 that of most flowering plants, consists of two distinguishable parts, viz., 

 the rudimentary cotyledons or seed-leaves, and the short axis or 



* Taxinece, Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. p. 367 (1868). Taxece et Podocarpece, Bentham 

 and Hooker, Gen. Plant. III. pp. 422, 423 (1881). And others. 



I- The fruit of Taxads is drupe or berry-like in appearance only; the drupe and berry in 

 their botanical signification are developments of the ovary and contain the seed or seeds ; but 

 in Taxads the seeds are always solitary and enclosed in a fleshy aril originating from the ovule. 



The so-called berries (galbuli) of the Juniper have a superficial resemblance to the fruits of 

 Taxads, but structurally they conform to the strobiles or fruits of the Coniferse, the confluent 

 scales being fleshy or succulent, instead of ligneous. 



Journal of the Linnean Society, XXX. p. 1. 



